Did you know that there's a not unsubstantial corner of YouTube devoted to pornographic videos that aren't pornographic? And did you know that thousands of people click these painfully unsexy clips daily?

Welcome to The YouTube Fake Porno Nexus, a weird pocket of YouTube where the most stultifying videos rack up millions of hits, thanks to the clicks of the bored and the horny. Is this the future of online content?

To get a sense of how much unwatchable pap exists on YouTube, give the Dadabot video aggregator, which creates a randomized playlist of YT's least watched videos, a whirl. Never before did I appreciate just how much blurry footage of Bangladeshi cricket matches roams the digital ether.

Anyway, YouTube's ban on naturism inspires some bizarre behavior amongst its users. Every now and again, the "Related Videos" sidebar (which normally fails to live up to its name) will display a video boasting A.) a titillating thumbnail; and B.) several million views.

Clicking on this thumbnail inevitably leads to 1.) an excruciatingly unsexy video; and 2.) yet another sidebar jammed with highly viewed, misleading recommendations. And yes, most of these recommendations lead to even more ersatz erotica.

I have no idea how deep this netherworld of simulacrum smut goes — one would likely die of disappointment trying to plumb its depths — but I do know it abuts infinity.

Yes, dear readers, The YouTube Fake Porno Nexus is out there, and its tendrils ensnare more Related Videos sidebars every day.

For example, take a look at the sidebar above. Notice the video titled "Tit Ange" with over one million hits. Well, that thumbnail leads to a montage of a nice Francophone couple's baby photos ("tit ange" = "petit ange" = "little angel" in English). The nudity-promising sidebar thumbnails adjacent to "Tit Ange" lead to such saucy clips as a PG-rated Cameroonian music video. (Top Comment with 45 Likes: "thumbs up if u just wiewed it becouse u thougt u were﻿ going to see tits")

"It seems more enjoyable to﻿ see boobs on you tube than to simply type porn into google," 38 Likes.

This latter comment sums it all up. Despite the fact that the internet is essentially a shadow dimension weaved out of gossamer receipts of lost pizza boys and cable repairmen, YouTubers still act like confused adolescents thumbing through the Caldors lingerie catalog. They desperately hope that the half-frowning brassiere model on Page 7 will disrobe entirely on Page 8. (Spoiler Alert: There is a sale on Kenmore dutch ovens on Page 8.)

How did I discover The YouTube Fake Porno Nexus? Touché. Last Sunday evening, I needed a YouTube clip to accompany a post about the orang minyak, Malaysia's oil-covered sex monster. (I eventually settled on a clip from the Shaw Brothers' sleaze classic Oily Maniac, but that's neither here nor there.)

And in the sidebar for that video (above), I noticed something called "Aksi Terlampau Sharifah Sofia Di Sofa," a 21-second video with 170,855 views and an attractive woman in the thumbnail.

Curious how this video deserved ~8,135 views per second, I clicked on it, only to discover an out-of-focus, fully clothed montage of Ms. Thumbnail (also a video review by mrcooljaybee85, "bull shit this﻿ video"). In that sidebar, I saw the asleep-at-the-wheel thumbnail for the aforementioned Search for Son (at left). My journey down the rabbit hole had begun.

The internet is full of smut, so what makes The YouTube Fake Porno Nexus special? When I was 12 years old, some friends and I discovered a porno mag treasure trove hidden in a tree behind the neighborhood pool club. Horrified by our own sexuality, we lit the crusty magazines on fire.

In retrospect, this was a shitty thing to do, as these XXX periodicals were likely some poor homeless guy's collection of fine topaz and lapis lazuli. But what I'm saying is The YouTube Fake Porno Nexus is my childhood Porno Oak for the entire internet (if the tree was full of an adult bookstore's heating bills, that is).

We've reached a point where thousands of bored people stumble upon what is essentially an invisible, giant shoebox full of stained Redbooks and the carefully folded UK album art for Electric Ladyland. It's a communal experience, but atomized across continents. Furthermore, I've only explored a fraction of The YouTube Fake Porno Nexus that has organically coalesced to cater to heterosexual males. There are literal miles of misleading thumbnails out there to be unfulfilled by! Some of you must need dissertation topics!

It's as if we're all in the same prehistoric cave, hiding behind thousands of stalagmites and ogling Oog's auroch-blood drawing of two woolly mammoths rutting. But the cave is dark, and we are drunk on fermented bananas. In reality, Oog actually scrawled two sabertooth tigers doing their taxes. Also, taxes haven't been invented yet. That's where civilization is, and that's fucking insane.

PS: By labeling this article NSFW and only offering a one-nippled screenshot of Search for Son and Tim McGraw barely unbuttoned, io9 has become a de facto outpost of The YouTube Fake Porno Nexus.